Sunday, May 24, 2015

Knee Deep (literally)

*1*

Watched a great documentary film "Weapons of the Spirit," this week-end on a small Heugonaut village in France that rescued hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. The entire community came together to provide food, shelter and education to children whose lives were forfeit in the currency of the time. One of the villagers said, "It was not an extraordinary Christianity that we possessed. It was Christianity, put to the test." A beautiful testimony to an entire community willing to dare say, "2+2=4".

*2*

We are still doing some school- bits and pieces, along with math for Cub. In between the pieces, the kids are reading, spending hours playing Legos, walking in the fields and along the river, drawing, painting, planting flowers and getting lost in a computer game or two.

*3*

Feeche removed more barbed wire, metal posts and general over-run mayhem in certain areas of the property. It looked too fun so the rest of us spent several school/work breaks in the fields with him, taking down wire, digging out posts. When I say, "digging out posts" you might think to yourself, "ah, a few shovelfuls, a hard yank and voila, a post!" Not so, my friends. These posts, set almost 90 years ago, are 3 feet deep into prairie sod and put in to last the duration. It required digging, digging, removal of stones and rocks, more digging. levering underneath the post and then finally calling Feeche over to twist and strong arm the post into submissive compliance while mutterings of, "Come out!" were heard. Yeah, that was fun. Some of the posts we decided were just a really terrific reminder of what the place used to look like, and since our backs were killing us, we are all about the reminder. Plus, they are aligned so perfectly- the craftsmanship that went into all of it is really something to behold.

*4*

While this has nothing to do with what comes next, I thought I'd give you a real world view of living with 15 yo.

And since we were outside anyway, we decided to start on the last of the brick-work, a short walkway outside the back-door. And the huge uglified pile of bricks sitting under the west window will be in the ground. It's amazing how hardscaping civilizes a place.

*5*

Flowers garden is growing, though we had to cover it for frost this week- mid-May y'all and it was sweater weather all week long. We mostly cleared the front beds and added in flowers and hostas. As I was moving daisies around one of the trees, I took a step and sank over knee deep in dirt, one leg only. Yes, you read that right. The best we can figure is it was the place where the old tree stump had rotted away, leaving ultra porous earth. Once I was extracted (thank God Dr. Dh was home!), we filled it in with some of the hard packed dirt we had dug up for the brick walk-way. Even with that, Cub went out to investigate and the area was super squishy. While I was stuck and slightly flipping out about whatever earth dwellers might be touching my submerged leg, Dr. Dh had a good laugh at my expense. His response, (laugh, laugh, laugh), "Get the camera!" (laugh, laugh, laugh).

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5 Days of Teaching Creatively

Gracious Heart Homeschool Vision

To give our children a firm foundation- academically, emotionally, socially, spiritually, so that they can be carefree during childhood, pointed True North all of their earthly days and in the presence of the One True Living God for all eternity.